Why does the CPUSA support the Democrats ?

[tradeunionsupporter]

Why does the CPUSA support the Democrats and Obama did the CPUSA support Bill Clinton when he was President ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNq78dZ3TnE

[Comrade Funk]

Because they aren't communist

[Geiseric]

they've always supported the democrats, stalin told them to do it in the late 20's through the depression and WW2.

[eyeheartlenin]

The CPUSA has occasionally run its own candidates for President, at least a couple of times that I can remember, but it has been backing the Democrats for a long time now. My understanding is that every four years the CP discovers a major danger from the right, and, according to them, the only solution is the Democratic Party. They certainly joined in backing Obama's presidential campaign, and they will undoubtedly work hard for Obama's re-election.

The CPUSA's head over heels affection for the Democratic Party is in accord with Stalinist advocacy of a Pop Front, that is, workers' organizations tied to a bourgeois politician, till kingdom come. The Pop Front has the effect of making workers' political independence from the exploiting class, impossible. It was designed to secure a safe future for the USSR by placating the capitalists. Although Stalin and the USSR no longer exist, Pop Front politics are still the rule for the earnest elderly adherents of Gus Hall's CPUSA. According to the CP, the Democrats are peachy keen!

About the CP's attitude to Bill Clinton, Ballot Access News, which may have an internet page, would be able to tell one if the CP ran its own candidate when Clinton was running. I don't believe that it did, which would mean the CP was backing the Democrat Clinton, but people can check for themselves.

[Aleenik]

The CPUSA is a horrible organization that disgraces the name of Communism. There is no reason the CP should be part of their name. You couldn't pay me to join them.

[Commissar Rykov]

The CPUSA is a horrible organization that disgraces the name of Communism. There is no reason the CP should be part of their name. You couldn't pay me to join them.
Well that is because you are required to pay them to be members.:D

CPUSA is garbage it is not revolutionary what it considers to be revolutionary is supporting the Democrats...no seriously they believe supporting a Bourgeois Party is the epitome of Revolutionary behavior. The party leadership is garbage even though it does sucker in some young and naive comrades who think they are legit.

[Le Socialiste]

As others have pointed out, the CPUSA's politics largely align with the Democratic Party, an alignment that has been in place for decades. This shift towards the accomodation of the Democrat's policies really began in full swing after Roosevelt's election in 1932. For instance, prior to FDR's presidency the CPUSA was by and large opposed to the traditional trade unions, arguing instead for workers to organize into 'red unions'. However, the party gradually shifted this stance, encouraging workers to focus more on joining the major American unions instead. It was also around this time that the party adopted the idea for a 'united front' of all parties, groups, and organizations opposed to fascism - thus leading them further into the Democratic Party's fold (which is ironic, considering the number of deals made by either major party with Hitler's Germany). Shortly after the CPUSA abandoned its opposition to FDR's New Deal and threw its support behind the policies within it. This is also around the time the party began its active support for the Democrats and their candidates (following the idea that they represented the "lesser of two evils").

Things largely developed from there, with the party forgoing the class struggle and shifting further right to accomodate the Democrats. By adopting the inevitable (reformism and opportunism) as their unofficial line, the CPUSA fell into the same historical circumstances that previous parties of the revolutionary left had fallen into. By moving their focus towards the support of liberal bourgeois politics and policy, they took the road of least resistance. Why is this? I see it as an inevitable reaction to the reality of the modern party and its participation in the machinations of the bourgeois state. It is impossible for a political party to participate in the general functions of the state without inevitably becoming a part of it (this holds true even for those who adopt as their political and ideological line the aims and goals of the revolutionary left). So the CPUSA's shift toward the Democratic Party was a natural one, especially given the conditions and circumstances of the time. The result of those decisions back then are clearly being felt today, since the party still serves as the unofficial 'left-wing' of the Democrats.

[RGacky3]

They were basically a tool of the comintern during the cold war, now that thats over they are largely irrelevant, and they are begging for relevancy by trying to coddle democrats.